Readers of our forum may already know Robocco, a household robot that can serve you a beer, built by Japanese brewer Asahi.

In the past two weeks another household robot has received a lot of attention: Built by the Fraunhofer Institute in Stuttgart, Germany the Care-O-bot 3 can not only serve drinks, but manipulate and transport all sorts of household items. The newest prototype can be directed by spoken commands and it can even recognize and respond to gestures. Unlike other household robots that require complex programming, the Care-O-Bot can quickly learn to recognize new objects: Simply place an unfamiliar object in the robot’s hand and it will use laser scanners, 3D vision and color recognition cameras to learn its shape.

Also part of the kitchen cleaning robot challenge, the all-time favorite Ready-Bot. CAREFUL - if you're anything like me you'll have the tune of the video below playing in your head all day!

The Readybot project aims to construct a general-purpose mobile robot capable of cleaning the kitchen. Version 1 is designed primarily as a proof-of-concept for feasibility test and general demonstration.This project is intended to answer a simple question:How many common household and commercial tasks can a 2-armed, moderate-dexterity, simple robot perform?An additional goal is to expand the domestic robotics industry, by showing a viable model for new robotic ventures, and also showing the economic and social benefits of large-scale adoption of robotics.

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The most recent household robot developed by researchers at the University of Tokyo:

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Mitsubishi has also developed a household robot called "Wakamuru". The video shows the 2005 version at a robot exhibition in Akihabara, Tokyo, Japan.Unfortunately only very little info on the web for now - this 2003 Wired article may be the best source of info for now.

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Researchers at the Technical University of Munich have just introduced another new household robot called B21. Here's the jist from the New Scientist article:

The new robot, developed at the Technical University of Munich, exploits the use of radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags on dishes and utensils in its "Assistive Kitchen" to sidestep some of the object-recognition difficulties that have plagued previous household robots.

Robot chef uses RFID

B21-Household-Robot.jpg (100.88 KiB) Viewed 7565 times

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Hitachi's EMIEW robot or "robotic butler" is a Segway-bot which uses gyroscopes to keep its balance. The video shows version 2 of the robotic butler:

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Also just released in Japan last week by the Yasukawa Electric Corporation, the 1.3-meter tall SmartPal V has some tricks up it's sleeve as well:

Love how the Care-O-bot's designers have intentionally moved away from the humanoid concept! I find the prevailing tendency to focus on humanoids pretty limiting (I mean look at how practical my treads are!).

The French start up Aldebaran-Robotics based in Paris has high hopes for its humanoid robot called NAO. The device is 57 cm high and weighs 4.5 kilograms (about the size of a 6 month old baby) and you may be about to see a lot more of it. The company has sent a simplified version to 16 teams playing in the Robocup humanoid football league this year.

NAO looks an impressive device, judging by the design, which the company has posted on the arXiv today. And others clearly agree. Earlier this year, the company picked up Euros 5 million in venture capital funding to help commercialise the device. The target market is university research labs involved in developing the next generation of software and hardware for robotics.

That’s a smart move because it could make NAO a de facto standard.

NAO doesn’t come cheap, however. A single robot will set you back Euros 10K but that is significantly cheaper than most other humanoids. Fujitsu’s HOAP costs $50K, for instance, and Honda hasn’t been able to put price on Asimo.

The company hopes that economies of scale will bring down the price as production scales up. Eventually it hopes to sell NAO to the public for Euros 4K each.